Research Practice

Practice Update – our involvement in research

As a practice we are constantly looking at ways of improving the health of our patient population and increasing our knowledge and skills to help deliver continually improving care. One way we do this is to work closely with the Clinical Research Network (CRN) which implements research studies with the aim of helping GPs and nurses. For example, in Leicester we are fortunate to have an internationally renowned diabetes research team at The Leicester Diabetes Centre (LDC) located at the Leicester General Hospital. The LDC runs many studies through general practices like the Croft Medical Centre. Specialist nurses are involved and studies provide a welcome look at groups of patients in a more specialised way.

Quite often new diagnoses, early interventions and real improvements in patient outcomes can be observed over the study. Study participants will receive an enhanced intervention above and beyond routine clinical care. Often, these new ways of working offer significant improvements over current routine care and eventually, it results in becoming part of the routine care patients receive in the future.

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All the studies we will take up will be carefully selected by our doctors and tailored for our population of patients. You may be invited to participate if your GP or nurse thinks you would be eligible to help with the research projects currently being carried out. If this happens you can ask for further information from one of the Croft team or the study team directly. All invitation letters will have been sent out from the Croft Medical Centre by one of our team.

Your participation would be completely voluntary and we must stress that a decision not to take part in, or to withdraw from, a research project will in no way affect your normal treatment. All studies will provide their own resources, nursing and support staff, therefore not impacting on the practice or its staff. Furthermore, all studies will have been through vigorous ethics and local approvals to ensure they pass the highest standards of patient care, confidentiality and safety.

It is also important to let you know that all the studies we will be involved in will focus on improving patient care and will not be commercial in nature. They will generally be funded by the research arm of the NHS.

If you have any comments, concerns or questions please contact our PPG at [email protected]. Our practice PPG is fully supporting our desire to enhance patient care and we see this as an important part of this ongoing process.

For more information please visit http://www.crn.nihr.ac.uk/east-midlands/.

You can view our ‘Research Ready’ certificate, which has been issued by the Royal College of General Practitioners.